


Strangest Stranger

by Dedicate Kiwicrocus (cranky__crocus)



Series: SMACKDOWN '11 Round Two - Team Discipline [10]
Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Gen, Goldenlake, smackdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-21
Updated: 2011-05-21
Packaged: 2017-10-19 16:12:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/202758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cranky__crocus/pseuds/Dedicate%20Kiwicrocus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Harry met Sally.  I mean, uh...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strangest Stranger

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SMACKDOWN at Goldenlake: fiefgoldenlake.proboards.com
> 
> You'll just have to tell me if Lark has all her marbles.

Some days Rosethorn thoroughly resented her continued competition with Isa— _Crane_ , she reminded herself: Dedicate Crane. A year after their dedications and they both still insisted on meeting weekly to compete with teas and perfumes. The days Rosethorn most resented their arrangement were often distinctly correlated to the days she lost in their competition—which, as she considered a matter of pride, was not incredibly often.

            Still, she couldn’t help wondering, as she wandered the paths of Winding Circle, how long their weekly meetings would last. Surely at some point she would wish to leave her Lightsbridge life in the past and plant herself more firmly into the new life she had dedicated herself to within Winding Circle temple. Furthermore, she was within the _Earth_ Temple while Crane was of the _Air_ , which she thought was fitting.

He had always been interested in more aristocratic, airy things like rank and order and how well he could look down his nose at others. She had always been a more hands-on girl: trees, shrubs, flowers, fields, soil… If she couldn’t wipe her hands on her apparel, she didn’t see the point in wearing it; if he couldn’t dazzle a room with his, there _was_ no point in wearing it, by his reckoning—and certainly not with any _dirt_. It was a wonder he could handle plants at all, or that he didn’t feel stifled in his new life with a strict uniform.

But she smiled to think of it, for he was her picky Isas and she was his prickly Niva. Prickly and picky, she had come to find, worked well together—except for when they didn’t, but that was half the fun.

            They were dedicates now, anyway, so it seemed he had come around to her way of thinking in the end; no one could say these habits were worth too much to wipe a soiled hand on.

            The autumn leaves crunched beneath Rosethorn’s simple boots as she headed toward her favourite garden along the north wall, by that strange old cottage that seemed to her a place entirely beyond control. Regardless, the gardens were nice, and sometimes she preferred to steal an hour or two away; the cottage garden was perfect. It had the added bonus of being marvellous for birds, which endeared the spot to her as she much preferred them to humans and the Hub.

            She had even tacked up a meagre bird feeder. Mainly she wished to thank the skylarks for their tumbling flights and extravagant songs, much more elaborate than the other birds’ songs and almost more appealing due to their drab brownish hues instead of fanciful colours.

            Rosethorn slid down and leaned against the rock next to her favourite corner tree, sighing out her competitive crankiness and admiring the overrun garden before her. She smiled, safe in the knowledge that none but the garden life was watching.

            “You have a lovely smile,” a voice called down from the tree.

            Rosethorn startled and glared up, covering her eyes to see the intruder.

            She had met peculiar people before, in Anderran villages and Lightsbridge communities and certainly within Summersea and Winding Circle itself, but she was not sure she had ever met such a _strange_ stranger in all her dealings. This girl-woman was hanging upside-down with her novice-white habit falling about her, giving her the appearance of a lily of the valley flower or a snow-white bell. She was grasping a book to her chest underneath the habit.

            “ _What_ are you doing up there?” Rosethorn questioned, voice sharp and stern, as if the woman was committing the gravest of crimes. And she was: she was disturbing Rosethorn’s peace, which came spare enough to treasure.

            “Teaching myself to read.” The woman gestured at the book and for a moment all Rosethorn could see of her was her cat-like grin, nearly as white as the habit belled around her. “Listening to the larks.”

            “ _Why?_ ”

            “Because they’re fascinating. Did you know a group of larks is called an ‘exaltation’? Which is funny, because if you’re larking about, you’re being a bit of a trickster.  An exaltation of tricksters, all larking about up there.”

            “Funny you should mention _larking about_ —”

            “And I’m teaching myself to read,” the woman continued, ignoring Rosethorn’s interruption, “because I haven’t learned to yet.”

            “Why are you doing it _up there_ _?_ ” Rosethorn clarified, frowning; she was perplexed as to why she hadn’t told this ridiculous woman to _hush_ as she would have any other. She actually found this monkey-woman _interesting_.

            “Good a place as any, and a sight worth seeing is worth seeing from a different angle.”

            Somehow Rosethorn found it difficult to fault her logic—Mila’s name, _was_ that actual logic?—and merely narrowed her eyes, contemplating. At last she called up, “All the blood will go to your head!”

            “Better than my ego,” the woman riposted immediately, her grin reforming. “What’s _your_ head filled with—ego or blood?”

            Maddening! This woman was _maddening_ and clearly mad herself! And yet Rosethorn did not rise from her rock to leave. She thought of Crane and wrinkled her nose. “Blood. Ego takes up too much space.”

            Rosethorn looked up in time to see the woman grab the branch beneath her knees with one book-free hand and push back over it with her legs, allowing her to flip backward and drop through the air like a falling flower, habit flared out around her. She landed delicately on her feet and dropped down in one fluid motion, until her book-free hand struck the ground; the book remained cradled to her chest. Rosethorn had to admit a certain fondness for those who knew how to properly revere a book, no matter how unorthodox the reading location. To think this woman did it without knowledge of how to read the words within it, of what the book might contain…

            The woman’s head tilted as she inspected Rosethorn from more level ground; Rosethorn took the time to do the same. The stranger’s face was profoundly cat-like in its prominent, broad cheekbones and slender chin; her behaviour and expressions heightened the resemblance. Golden-brown skin and almond eyes of the Eastern lands, tall willowy stature, perhaps some years older than Rosethorn but with a youthful presence…

            “I’m Paraskeve,” she introduced with a soft smile rather than a grin. “Or Paras. I prefer this place to the dorms, sometimes—it’s more restful than the dorms, when I can get away.”

            “I know the feeling. I’m—” Rosethorn paused and placed her chin on her hand, propped on her knee at the elbow, to hide the pause produced by nearly introducing herself incorrectly again. It was difficult around those with non-dedicated names. “Rosethorn.”

            She felt somewhat bare as Paras looked her up and down. “Rose, thorn. A contradiction and combination I can see in you.”

            “Well I’m _touched_ , as you had so much voice in my naming decision—”

            “I like it.” Paras’ grin was back. She slid down the tree trunk and sat cross-legged, placing her out of Rosethorn’s circle of immediate wrathfully-aggravated personal space and into the neutral zone of either curiosity or controlled contempt. Rosethorn found she didn’t mind this slight invasion of privacy, which shocked her to no end.

            She closed her eyes to meditate, recalling her breath and the plants surrounding her, the tree-self within her…and stopped when she heard Paras’ murmurs. It wasn’t the presence of sound that bothered her—she had meditated through worse drivel—but the actual collection of sounds. One of Rosethorn’s eyes opened; she watched Paras, head bent over the book in her lap, mumbling out sounds. The sounds were incorrect. A person couldn’t learn if the foundation wasn’t right…

            “Bring that here,” Rosethorn instructed, opening both eyes and gesturing at the book. “You’re sounding them out wrong.”

            Paras made no comment on the latter and crawled over, rearranging herself next to Rosethorn and spreading the book over their two adjacent legs.

            “Before I bore myself to tears with this, how do you know so much about larks without reading?” Rosethorn queried, genuinely curious. She had seldom met a person who knew so much and could read so little.

            “I have good ears and I’ve seen the sky from many perspectives.” When Rosethorn’s look was still curious— _guardedly_ curious, but readably interested—Paras laughed, loud and clear. It was a pleasant sound. “I was a travelling tumbler before I came here.”

            “Why would you give _that_ up for _this_ _?_ ” Rosethorn indicated the book and the untamed garden.

            “ _That’s_ a story for another day.” Paras pointed at one of the words on the page. “What letter starts that word?”

            Rosethorn wasn’t quite finished. She gazed at Paras with one eyebrow raised. “You’re strange, you know.”

            “I am. But I am more than a decade older than most novices and I escape here; you fit the other dedicates and escape here as well. What does that say?” Paras’ eyes danced with delight. “Moonstream tells me this was once a cottage where the unusual novices like me would stay. ‘Discipline’, she called it.”

            “Why is it not open now?”

            Paras’ shoulder rose in a shrug; the curve of her neck and shoulder was impressive. “Seems no dedicate is interested in restoring it. Makes sense, given the state of…disrepair.”

            Rosethorn filed that information away. She nearly laughed at the name, Discipline, given its unruly state now. It could be hers—or she could belong to it, really, given her vows—if she expressed the desire. It was possible.

            Paras was watching her, smiling. Rosethorn shook the thoughts away and glanced at Paras’ finger, still pressed to a word in the book.

            “No, let’s start with this word, the vowel here. Have you heard of a long vowel…?”

            At the end of the day Rosethorn concluded that she was certainly a better teacher than Crane, at least. She had also beat him at finding a first potential friend—if she wanted a friend, _maybe_ , sometime down the line…

            She had also become acquainted with the strangest stranger she had ever met: a Janaali tumbler more at home on the road than in her birthplace, and decidedly more interesting than any other person Rosethorn had put up with in her life.

            The day was not a _complete_ loss, then.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! (:


End file.
